Thank you all: metengr, unclesyd and stanweld!!
Your advice has been most appropriate and it all makes sense.
From your frustrating comment stanweld it took some backbone from management to spend 10 million on a fix up. It must have been a serious screwup and large in scope. Care to elaborate...
Thanks stanweld.
I have no access to the info you refer to. Between yourself and metengr I think the issue is resolved. Others have offered similar explanations.
Some of this stuff is almost 10 years old and if there were records nobody can find them. All we have is the piping itself.
Hippo
Thanks meteng!
Had to go get more info.
What you suggested about the stacking of components and the resulting improper cooldown has been suggested as a possible culprit. The locations and the randomness of the soft areas still leave open questions.
Went back to the core sample reports I...
Thanks, but...
The field hardness tests were done properly by grinding down about a sixteenth, polished, then lab tested using 3 different instruments, core samples taken and hardness measured thru the wall, all with same results. Material some 6 inches away tested fine.
I have heard of P91 piping as having soft areas at random in pipe as well as fittings. Assuming all heat treatment operations have been done correctly by original component mfg as well as assembly fabricator but somehow the chemical distribution was not uniform to begin with especially re the...
